Tayyip Erdogan

By Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA, Dec 14 – Turkey is talking to Russia and Iran to try to ensure the evacuation of civilians and rebel fighters from Syria’s Aleppo, as air strikes and heavy shelling on Wednesday threatened to scupper the deal. President Tayyip Erdogan accused Syrian government forces of breaking a truce

ISTANBUL, Dec 4 – Turkey is taking steps to allow commerce with China, Russia and Iran to be conducted in local currencies, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, the government’s latest effort to shore up the tumbling lira. In a speech to flag-waving crowds in the central city of Kayseri, Erdogan also said that Prime

STRASBOURG, Nov 22 – The centre-right leader in the European Parliament denounced British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday as arrogant and seeking to goad the European Union for calling on it to let Turkey join the bloc. “It’s a purely arrogant provocation from Johnson when he’s telling us what we have to do,” said Manfred

ANKARA, Nov 14 – Turkey could hold a referendum on whether to continue membership talks with the European Union next year, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, repeating his warning to Brussels that it needed to “make up its mind” on Turkish accession. In a speech in Ankara broadcast on television, Erdogan urged Turks to

ISTANBUL, Oct 30 – Turkish authorities have dismissed more than 10,000 civil servants over their suspected links with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the failed coup in July. Thousands of academics, teachers and health workers were among those removed through a new emergency rule decree published on the Official Gazette late

ANKARA, Oct 27 – Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria will target the town of Manbij, recently liberated from Daesh by Kurdish-led forces, and the jihadists’ stronghold of Raqqa, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday. Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish warplanes, tanks and artillery, launched an operation dubbed “Euphrates Shield” in August to push Daesh

ISTANBUL, Oct 27 – Turkish prosecutors have ordered the detention of 73 air force pilots, the latest in a stream of police operations related to the investigation of July’s attempted coup, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Thursday. The operation targeting supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for the putsch, focused

ISTANBUL, Oct 6 – Twenty suspects including Turkish soldiers and a deputy governor were jailed pending trial on Thursday, accused of belonging to a “sleeper cell” to be activated if a July military coup attempt had been successful, state-run Anadolu Agency said. The move followed Wednesday’s dismissal of 540 soldiers from the naval and forces

By Asli Kandemir and Nevzat Devranoglu ISTANBUL/ANKARA, Sept 27- On the first trading day after Moody’s downgraded Turkey’s sovereign rating to “junk”, the reaction in Istanbul and Ankara was swift and predictable — stocks and the lira took a beating and policymakers accused the agency of playing politics. But the market fall-out was relatively short-lived,

ISTANBUL, Aug 30 – Turkish authorities detained an editor at the prominent Hurriyet newspaper in the latest round-up of journalists and others accused of links to last month’s failed coup, Hurriyet’s English-language publication said on Tuesday. It said Dincer Gokce, a Hurriyet editor, was detained with nine others after the Istanbul prosecutor issued detention warrants